‘World of Warcraft’ artists forum at UC Irvine

September 21st, 2009, 2:58 pm · 4 Comments · posted by RICHARD CHANG, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

“Gryphn Rider,” a 2004 print by Bill Petras. On view at Laguna Art Museum through Oct. 4. © Blizzard Entertainment.

Attention gamers and art fans: The Laguna Art Museum is hosting an artists’ forum at UC Irvine from 4-6 p.m. Oct. 1. The forum will take place at UCI’s Winifred Smith Hall.

The forum will include artists featured in the museum’s current exhibition, “WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon,” as well as Blizzard Entertainment’s cinematics project lead, Jeff Chamberlain. The forum will be moderated by the associate director of UC Irvine’s Beall Center for Art and Technology, David Familian.

The artists participating will be Antoinette LaFarge, Robert Nideffer and Eddo Stern.

LaFarge is an associate professor of digital media at UC Irvine. She’s a faculty member for the arts computation engineering graduate program in the studio art department, and is the director of academic computing at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts. Her digital print “World of World: The Adventures of Malbec and Player” is on view at the Laguna Art Museum.

Nideffer also teaches at UCI and is the director of the arts computation engineering program. He’s also director of the Game Culture and Technology Lab. His triptych, “2007 B.C.,” is currently on view at the museum, as is his flash-based game, “WTF?!,” co-curated by Alex Szeto.

Los Angeles-based artist Eddo Stern teaches game design at UCLA. He has three pieces currently on view at Laguna Art Museum: plastic, paper and electronic sculptures “MELF” and “Man Woman, Dragon,” and the animated video “Best Flame War Ever.” Stern also curated a portion of the machinama videos as well as contributed an essay to the manual that accompanies the show.

Immediately following the forum, a reception for the Beall Center’s upcoming exhibit, “Media Alchemy: Nam June Paik” (curated by Familian) will take place from 6:30-9 p.m.

“WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon” runs at the museum through Oct. 4.

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Stephanie Seitensprung says:

September 28, 2009 at 6:53 am

Thanks for that recommendation! I’ve always been interested in media phenomenons, so it will be very interesting to hear what experts have to say about the unbelievable success story of WoW. Another great thing is that they combine a dicussionen about gaming with its art. This sounds like a perfect day and the place to be.